


Estrangement

by mattiemogan



Series: The World Beyond the World [1]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkward Crush, Boarding School, F/M, Gen, Post - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), Post - X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), Slice of Life, Song: Mad World (Tears for Fears), Teenagers, X2: X-Men United (2003), Xavier Institute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-30
Updated: 2009-11-30
Packaged: 2021-01-16 11:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21270305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattiemogan/pseuds/mattiemogan
Summary: After Jean Grey’s death(s), Logan looks for redemption in some likely and unlikely places. First chapter takes place between X2 and X3; all other chapters take place after X3.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives.  
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, _Tender Is the Night_

He didn’t know why he loved her.

He hadn’t known her. He had no right to miss her, no stake in their grief. Scott had been her fiancé, Storm had been her best friend. The professor had been her mentor. Even the students had known her longer and in better circumstances. He was just that guy. That guy who had been dropped into their lives due to some weird string of unlucky events, the guy who shouldn’t have been there in the first place, the guy who tried not to stick around but kept coming back.

But still, he had loved her all the same. He had no answer for why—not for himself, and not for other people. Not that anyone ever asked.

“Well, shit Logan,” Remy said to him. “You fell in love with Jean Grey.” A pause. “I don’t quite know what to say about that. Ain’t that surprising, really. We all love people we can’t have. It’s probably the most human thing ever. Our craving for hurt and self-punishment. On a purely instinctual level, love and death are so intertwined that fucking is almost like suicide.”

They were talking on the phone. Remy was in Louisiana; Logan was in New York.

“Hmm,” Logan said. He wished Remy wouldn’t do this—try to get all deep and philosophical. Remy’s mind was bizarre; it went places Logan didn’t care to anticipate. (He didn’t want to equate his love for Jean with suicidal fucking. It was too early in the day, and he hadn’t yet started drinking.)

Logan was glad they were talking on the phone and not face to face. Remy easier to deal with when he was far away. When Logan went down south to visit—which he did maybe once every two to five years, give or take a decade—he felt both smothered and liberated by Remy, disarmed by the weirdness of a person who was both nonchalant and overly compassionate. Remy seemed fascinated by him; when he was with Remy, he felt like he couldn’t even get up to take a piss without feeling the intensity of Remy’s predatory affection. But Logan suspected that was nothing personal.

He didn’t know why he’d told the Cajun about Jean. Talk about self-punishment.

“Who cares why you loved her?” Remy said. “You just did. That’s the way it goes. Life is strange, y’know.”

“It’s all over now,” Logan said.

“That’s right, pal. And you know what? Jean Grey—excuse me, _Dr._ Jean Grey—would never have fucked you.”

Logan closed his eyes.

Get this: Remy knew Jean Grey. That’s right. File it under the “small mutant world” category. He’d also known Scott and Storm and the professor—he’d known everybody. In fact, Remy had had a nice little secret life with the X-Men years before Logan had even known they existed. Even though Logan had been acquainted with Remy for years, and though he’d also known him to disappear for long stretches of time, he’d never suspected that the Cajun had something going on. He’d assumed, during those long years of absence, that Remy was dead or thieving or doing something illegal, something that kept him running from the government. Turned out, he’d been working for Charles Xavier. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

“Never, never,” Remy said. “Not in a million years. She would not have ever, ever—”

“Okay, Gumbo—”

“—fucked you.”

“—I get it.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

Remy was not an X-Man, though; he had stopped working for Xavier years ago. Now he was in rehab, talking to Logan from a landline. Good lord. How fucked up was this situation? Logan was living in a mansion in some upstate New York hamlet surrounded by hordes of mutant kids and a small coterie of mutants who honestly believed, in all fucking bright-eyed un-ironical seriousness, that they could save humanity, and Remy was drying out in some low-rent facility down south, eating sugar cookies and talking twelve steps with coke-addicted CEOs and bored, unloved rich college kids.

But okay, let’s be honest: They were both in rehab. Logan’s program was just a little less well defined, but somehow twice as intense.

Remy loved to talk about rehab so much that Logan always made a point of not bringing up the topic. Once you got the kid started on his addictions, he couldn’t stop. He’d start off soliloquizing about his heroin-addled seventies, move to the subject of his alcohol-soaked eighties, and then top it off with the grand finale of the nineties: blow, barbiturates, and opioids.

“I mean,” Remy said, “it’s like me and my addictions.”

Logan tried not to sigh. He was standing in his bedroom and staring out the window into the courtyard. Some kids were down below trying to arm wrestle on the picnic table. 

“When I was druggin’ I couldn’t see but five seconds into the future.”

“Hmm,” Logan said. He tried to think of a good excuse to get off the phone.

“And I had to admit that I had a problem. Though, to be honest, never had much of a hard time with that.”

“Yeah,” Logan said.

“It’s about self-respect.” 

“Sure.”

“I mean, I ain’t comparing your thing with Jean to my thing with drugs. Don’t wanna insult you, friend. But frankly, there are some similarities.”

Logan turned away from the window. He’d get off the phone and go ask Storm or the professor what they wanted him to do this evening. It was Friday. He’d probably be taking some of the kids to the movie theater to see some animated feature with a singing horse and a talking cow or something. (He couldn’t believe that this was his life!)

Then Remy said: “With me? My thing? I had to go to rehab. But you? You just need to go out and get laid. No, excuse me. You need to get fucked. You need to fuck and be fucked. You need an overhaul. You need to go find yourself an acrobat. Jean Grey was a mighty fine lady, but when you get some twenty-four-year-old ex-modern dancer pinned in position seventy-six of the Kama Sutra, you’ll forget all about Dr. What’s Her Face. Trust me.”

There was a silence. Remy said, “Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” Logan said.

“Good. Get to it, son. Godspeed. I want to hear all about it. And Logan?” Another silence.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell the good folks at the mutant mission there that you and I talked.”

###

He didn’t know that she was a call girl.

There were signs, of course. Signs he willingly chose to ignore until it was time to pay up. But he’d ignored them because he thought she was beautiful and sharp, young and thin and confident. She was different from the women he usually slept with.

Most of the women he had sex with were often sad and a little older—rough around the edges. Rode hard, as they said, and put away wet. He didn’t know what that phrase really meant, but it seemed as accurate a description as anything for his standard bed partners.

For instance, he met one woman in a bar (where else) on the outskirts of town. He was “on furlough”—in other words, he had ditched the mansion for a night or two because he just couldn’t stand it anymore—couldn’t take the kids and Scott’s cold shoulder and Storm’s controlling presence and the professor’s constant mind-reading—so he went out to get laid.

She was late-forties, divorced, skinny and pockmarked. He wasn’t in the mood to care. When he went to take her against the wall, and rough, she complied, and that was good enough. “Damn,” she said afterwards. “Who are you in the business of forgetting?”

He was standing over the trashcan, pulling off his condom and thinking about reaching for a cigarette. But when she said that, he stopped moving for a second.

“Jesus,” she said, staring at him from across the room, her eyes glinting in the dim motel room light. “Sorry. I’m stupid sometimes. Don’t pay attention to me.”

Storm saw him later that night. He was sneaking into the mansion. Two in the morning. (She was always up. He suspected that her insomnia was worse than his. Not that Storm would ever say anything though—she was impenetrable, driven by this bizarre intrinsic motivation to get things done. That was something that quietly repelled him.) He was closing the door behind him and fiddling with the lock, and she was striding down the hallway, empty mug in her hand. “Did you have a nice time?” she said softly. She stopped in front of him and smirked.

“No,” he said.

“That’s too bad.” She started walking away. “There’s always next time,” she mouthed, whispering so as not to wake up the kids.

So when he met Silvana outside of the movie theater, he moved in on her. He was dropping a few kids off—they said they were going off to see some PG-13 movie, though Logan suspected that they were scheming to see something a little racier, and he didn’t blame them—and he paused for a minute to buy a newspaper from a dispenser. She was leaving the theater alone, by herself, wearing a turtleneck and a short skirt. Striking looks: tall and thin, long black hair and black eyes. He spoke first, asked for a cigarette. She gave him one.

It took only five minutes of talking before he knew that he was going to fuck her. And she must have known too. She was not cheap.

She invited him, right there, back to her place.

(Her real name was not Silvana. It was Jenny. She needed money for school. And afterwards he felt stupid and ridiculous. Most of Silvana’s clients were high-end—middle-aged businessmen taking breaks from their wives. They brought her gifts. Logan knew he was different. He wasn’t high-end, and he had no gifts to give, but he was a more interesting fuck. He _had_ to have been. Even she seemed surprised, and he knew she wasn’t faking.)

The first time he’d fucked her, he hadn’t really known she was a call girl. But the second and third time? He had no excuse. He didn’t believe in paying for sex—more out of pride than out of any ideological feelings about the exploitive nature of the business—but there was something about Silvana that interested him. He tried to figure out the exact reason for his attraction—her looks? Her smell? Her hair. It was long and dark and straight and parted in the middle. He could lose himself in it. 

“You can do what you want to me,” she said. “You can be as rough as you want, but you can’t leave a bruise. No bite marks. No hair-pulling. When I ask you to stop, it’s over.” She handed him a condom in the dim afternoon light.

What little money he had, he spent.

The professor ran into him one morning in the hallway. “Oh, Logan,” he said, “I’m glad you’re back. I have someone I want you to—”

Sunlight spilled through the windows and onto the carpeted floor. Logan felt himself swell in the early morning light as though sated. He paused.

He remembered bending Silvana over the sink in her bathroom. Gripping her hips from behind.

The professor stared at him.

The black forest of Silvana’s hair was something he wasn’t sure that he wanted. He knew only this: it was as far from Jean as he could get. And he was glad.

The professor seemed to relinquish his hold on Logan. He seemed to resign himself. “You don’t look well rested,” he said, his voice as calm as a sigh. “Maybe you should go back to bed.”

“I’m fine,” Logan said. In bed he thought only of Silvana. And then, consequently, of Jean.

He thought of reaching between Silvana’s legs, or nudging her to her knees in front of him.

The professor was still.

Logan put his hands on his hips. “Is Scott taking the danger room session this afternoon? Or am I?”

Another pause. “I’ll let you know.”

Logan nodded.

The professor glided away, down the hallway and into his office.

Torturing an old, paraplegic man with such pornographic thoughts. There was a special place in hell.

That afternoon, Logan removed a dead tree from the school grounds and thought of Jean, thought of the way her soft brown eyes had leaned into his, unflinching. He was glad he had kissed her, glad he had forced that connection. He’d made her uncomfortable, yes, and he’d gone where he’d had no right to go. He wasn’t proud, but he was glad—glad he had that piece of her, that last night, that memory.

Understand: He’d never claimed to be anything more or less than what he was.

###

“Well, shit Logan,” Remy said. “So tell me how it ended.”

“How what ended?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t develop feelings for the hooker. I can hear it in your voice.”

“She was a call girl, not a hooker. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“_Mon Dieu_. Ah, Logan.”

One night he’d gone to see her. He’d been a little early and she hadn’t been ready for him. She wasn’t dressed up—she had on a sweater and jeans. Not tight jeans. Just regular old jeans that a kid would wear. She seemed, all of a sudden, very young. “Oh,” she said. “Give me a minute. I’ll change.”

And he wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to, but he couldn’t find his voice.

Her living room of her apartment was small and yellow and lined with built-in bookshelves. The place was part of a house that someone was renting out. He wondered how many people had been here before him, how many men had come and left. He’d never seen anyone else. He wanted to think that there wasn’t anyone else, but he knew that that would be foolish.

There was a book open on her desk. Organic chemistry. In her notebook she had made some notes and attempted to solve a long, drawn-out equation. Her handwriting was small but elegant, perfectly formed letters and numbers, only the occasional scribble.

Jesus Christ, she was just a kid. She could have been one of the kids at school. The thought had never been far from his mind, but when he saw the evidence—the book, her jeans, her tousled hair—he could think of no one but the teenage girls back at the mansion, their hair fanned out on the sofa cushions, their sandaled feet propped up on the coffee table. And Rogue. So doe-eyed. Not innocent, no, not Rogue. But nice anyway. She was always thinking of things to tell him; he could tell that she thought long and hard all day so that she could offer him something a little bit interesting—a private observation about Storm (whom she disliked), a question, or a funny bit of commentary she’d heard on the radio. He was glad that he’d stuck around the mansion, if only for that. He didn’t have to give Rogue anything. He just had to be there, and that was enough. No one else but Rogue found his very existence in and of itself so gratifying. (Not Storm. Not even Remy.)

Rogue was probably wondering where he was. How could he account for this? He didn’t know what he’d say if she asked, the lie he might tell.

And this girl, Silvana, Jenny, whatever her name was (why did all of the women in his life have two names?)—she was different from all of that, apart from other girls her age. But she shouldn’t have been. That was the problem. And that was on him.

By the time she came back into the room, he was gone, he was gone, already going for his car, flying through the tunnel of trees that led back to Xavier’s. He was done.

“So . . . damn, Logan. You always make me sad.”

“So how’s rehab?” he asked. He just wanted to change the subject.

“Had a good share today. Good cry, too. Made some new friends.” A few seconds passed. “I’m serious about it this time, _ami_. Remy is settin’ course for clean. Permanently.”

“Yeah, sounds familiar.”

“Hey, I don’t think you have a right to be all judgmental. Not after that story you just told.”

“Like you haven’t done worse?”

“Touché.”

Then neither of them said anything for a while. Logan was out on the terrace sneaking a beer. He ran his fingers alongside the sweating bottle. He didn’t know what was going on inside of the mansion, but he could guess. Storm was probably urging the kids to go to bed and getting pissed off when they procrastinated and disobeyed. Scott was probably parked in front of the TV, ignoring everyone, watching some stupid show about fixing up a house. He seemed to like those shows.

It was how every evening went. Now he knew why he had avoided the trappings of normal life for so long: it was irritating. A big trade-off. What you got in exchange for stability hardly seemed worth it: the wait for the mailman, the overcooked peas, the need to go out and buy toilet paper every so often. 

He remembered the day Remy had come to Jean’s funeral. He’d seemed so out of place here in Westchester. Logan had thought that his suit looked too big for him, but it wasn’t; Remy was just uncomfortable here, which was unusual. Normally the guy was golden in most situations. But something about Westchester had him by the balls.

He and Scott had gotten into a fight about something, something that seemed to go deep and far back. Logan had just watched. As with everything else, he felt like he shouldn’t have been there.

“You should come up here to visit when you’re finished with your program,” Logan said.

“Back to the mission, right,” Remy said. He always called it that—_the mission_. When Logan once asked him why, he said, "Because it was built for the expressed purpose of civilizing savages like you and me. Charles Xavier is a real fucking Jesuit, deep down inside."

Now he said: “I’ll make my way eventually.”

“These people,” Logan said. “These kids. One of them had a nightmare and caused the foundation to crack. Jesus. How did you live here? How did you stand it?”

“I lived in the back,” Remy said. “I didn’t see much.”

Logan could hear the flick of a lighter on the other side of the phone.

“You know what?” Remy said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I love you, and I love the way you see the world. A real case study in _ostranenie_.”

“What?”

“Exactly. Russian. _Ostranenie._ We don’t really have a word for it in our language. The closest we can come is estrangement, and that don’t come close to capturing the weirdness of the word. But it’s a certain sorta artsy way of registering the fucked-upness of things.”

Logan shook his head. Remy. Jesus Christ. Was anyone as maddening or as exasperating? As difficult to pin down? When Logan talked to Remy, he was never quite sure which Remy he was getting. Logan was who he was, but Remy was who you wanted him to be, and then he was something else altogether. He was equal parts Cajun hick and Creole refinement, good ole boy crossed with southern gentlelman, part philosopher and all hedonist: philinstinistic, sybaritic, Hellenistic, phallocentric. He had a mind that grabbed onto anything and exploited everything, that turned things around just for the hell of it. He was always your friend, but he was never on your side. You were just a trick to be played, a game to be seen through.

“Whatever, pal.” Logan said. “You must have some time on your hands. Wish I had that problem.”

Remy laughed. “In rehab, most people find Jesus. But I was never big on religion. So I’ve been reading a lot.” He paused. “I meant it as a compliment, you know.”

“Storm always asks me about you,” he said. “Asks me if I’ve heard from you. I lie. Why don’t you want me to tell them we talk?”

Silence. Then Remy said: “I’m saving them for step nine. All of them.”

But that was before Alcatraz, which rendered Remy’s step nine an unfulfilled promise, a tragic might-have-been. It was the last time he heard from Remy for a very, very long time.


	2. Chapter 2

“There he is!”

“Where?”

“_There_,” Kitty said, pointing at him. Pointing at where he stood leaning with his back against the shed.

He had a cigar between his thumb and his forefinger. One leg bent at the knee, foot against the wood behind him. Everything was wet. He felt wet. The early morning, early summer dewiness had seeped into his jeans and his socks. He didn’t remember what it was to not be so damp.

His arms were crossed in front of his chest. Alcatraz—Jean’s death—wasn’t but a week in the past, but already he was losing track of time. He’d been back from that battle for three days when he’d taken off again. On foot. Through the woods. He hadn’t known where he was going or what he was doing, but he had known this: He just couldn’t stand the brightness and noisiness of the mansion anymore. It pricked him, rattled his senses. It was too much. Overload. No one could understand.

The sun was cresting over the trees, the light refracted in the hazy morning fog.

Kitty and Bobby were running toward him. They must have caught a glimpse of him when they’d come from behind the small glade of trees next to the mansion.

He was aware that they were both moving very quickly toward him, arms outstretched not to embrace him but as if to catch him before he slipped away again.

“Logan,” Kitty said. “Logan.”

Bobby was breathless—wide-eyed as though amazed. And slightly panicked. Most likely, he didn’t know what to make of Logan. Didn’t understand this state. He said, “We looked everywhere for you. Where were you? We looked all day yesterday.”

They came to a stop in front of him. Then they moved to stand on either side of him, but they didn’t touch him. Kitty seemed to want to reach for him. She brought her hand up and then stopped, held it there.

He didn’t look at the two of them. Not at Kitty’s soft face or Bobby’s eyes. He looked straight ahead. He looked at the trees and the rooftop of the mansion in the distance. Then he dropped his eyes and sniffed.

“Bobby, Kitty.” Storm’s voice. Calm now, but firm.

He closed his eyes. He could hear Storm approach and call their names again. She was striding purposefully across the grass in her black flats (_school clothes, it was a school day, wasn’t it_), hurrying but not running. When she reached them, she put her hand on Kitty’s shoulder.

“Go back inside now,” she whispered. Not so firm this time but still so calm.

Kitty and Bobby glanced at each other and then at Logan, and then at Storm. Then, as if following unwritten stage directions, they turned toward each other, peeled off, and walked away. (He realized, as he watched them go off, that they were retreating. Just as he’d taught them—falling in line one after the other. _He’d taught them. _He waited for his heart to break open again.)

“Glad you’re back, Logan,” Bobby said over his shoulder.

So then it was just Storm in front of him. He looked down at himself, down at his mud-stained, damp jeans. He held the cigar at his side and away from her.

“Are you okay?” she said. She sounded both concerned and very casual, as if she were trying to simply downplay the shittiness of the situation. Like, well, you disappeared Logan, we thought we’d never see you again, but here you are, so all’s well that ends well.

He nodded but didn’t look up.

“Yeah, we were worried. We thought maybe something had happened.”

What the hell could have happened? _To him_? The worst had already happened—to other people: Alcatraz and all the rest.

For three days he’d been away from the mansion, walking through the woods. Most of the time he just walked. Sometimes he ran. Sometimes he’d run through streams or climbed up hills or just waited in the shade for night to come. Day was dull and abrasive and hot. Night was magical. Your mind filled in the gaps. One night he’d walked alongside of the road and had come upon a dead deer. Its body was leaned against the guard rail, and its eyes glinted in the headlights of each passing car. As the headlights skimmed its body, the trees cast shadows that looked like black wings. He had approached the deer slowly and from the side, almost worried that it would rise up and fly away. But when he got close to it, he noticed only the crusted-over mouth, the oozing, eaten-away eyes, the smell.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Storm said. “I think you should come inside, though.” She looked up. “It’s going to rain.”

That was Storm. So unsentimental, always so concerned with the practical. He should go in because it was going to rain—he should stay for the night because it was getting late and the traveling would be better tomorrow. Not because she wanted him to stay, right.

But maybe she was just saying what she thought he’d want to hear. What she thought he’d expect.

He looked up at her and realized he was crying. He dropped his cigar.

Her expression softened. She seemed to embrace that slight gap between her controlled concern for him and her own abject terror about what had happened. “Oh, Logan. Logan, you’re shaking,” she whispered. She stepped closer to him, set a hand on his arm. Then, reached for him.

He staggered into her and buried his face in her shoulder and sobbed noiselessly, effortlessly.

“I know,” she said, and her voice was shaky. She tightened her arms around him. “I’m so sorry.”

He clutched her shoulders and felt the tears rise within him.

She waited until he finished crying and then led him back to the mansion and brought him in the side door, said she didn’t want the kids to see him right then—more for his sake than theirs. He nodded. He needed his space.

“You can use my bathroom to clean up,” she said after she’d led him up the stairs. She opened the door to her bedroom but didn’t go inside. She just nodded. “I’ll make you some coffee. And I’ll leave some sweats on the bed for you. Go on.” She set her hand on his arm, just for a second.

Storm’s bathroom was neat, but not irritatingly neat as he thought it would be. The towels matched the bathmat and the shower curtain, but everything was slightly disheveled—washcloth left on the sink, open bottle of Ambien on the counter. (He knew it—he’d recognized her as a fellow insomniac.) He was surprised that she hadn’t run in to clean things up before letting him come in here—she was so guarded and private, such a control freak.

But these were unfair thoughts to have about a person who’d just taken him back, unquestioning, after he’d run off to the woods for a few days—run off while she’d been soothing the fears of two dozen mutant kids.

He turned on the hot water and watched as steam filled the room.

When he was finished and dressed, he found her sitting in the small upstairs kitchenette, the one attached to Scott’s bedroom. She didn’t hear him approach, and when he saw her, her face was creased with worry. But when she saw him she remembered herself—relaxed and smiled at him. He hated her, just a little bit, for pretending that things were okay.

“That was quick,” she said, and pushed a mug of coffee in his direction.

He approached the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. “How are they?”

“Everyone’s fine. Are you hungry? You want something?”

“I’ll get something later.”

There was a long silence. She finally filled it. “You want to talk?”

He leaned back in his chair. “No. Not now.” And to her, never.

He didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want to have some one-sided chat about his feelings—all neediness on his end, concern and responsibility on hers.

She looked hurt for a second—or what he could glimpse of hurt. Then she recovered. Nodded. “Okay. But if you ever want to talk.”

He nodded.

She rose from the table.

He drew in his breath. “What do you need done today?”

She stopped. “God. Nothing. Just relax. Everything’s under control.”

Of course it was.

When he stumbled back to his room he thought only of sleep. He had a book on his nightstand—one he’d started reading before Alcatraz—but he doubted that he’d ever finish it now.

He’d just closed the door over and planned to pull back the covers when he heard a small, barely audible knock at the door. When he pulled it open he found Rogue.

She just stood there. Her face was anxious but relieved somehow (he didn’t know how both expressions could occupy the same face simultaneously) and she was fighting back tears. He took her in: her soft hair, her arms, her ungloved hands.

“I knew you weren’t—I knew you weren’t gone—because of the motorcycle,” she said, her voice catching, her tears coming. “I told them—that if you were leaving you would have taken the motorcycle—but they didn’t believe me—”

He held out his arms and felt the soft crush of her hands and hair and skin against him. For the first time in a long time, she could be as careless with herself as anyone else, and he was happy for her.

He wouldn’t run again.

###

So his memories became school memories, and the days got longer. He eased into the routine of the kids’ summer schedule: wake-up call, breakfast, computer lab time, gym, structured recreation, dinner, free time, bed. They did other things, too. One day they all went to a minor league baseball game. Another time they went on a nature walk. (He skipped that.) But on the whole, things were fine. He monitored the situation constantly, all too aware of the impermanence of such a set-up. It felt like a movie he was watching, one that might have an unsatisfying ending. He felt himself standing on the outside.

But at the same time, he felt useful.

Usefulness was something he hadn’t felt in a long time—maybe ever. During all of his years alone, his time had been his own, but it hadn’t been particularly meaningful for anyone. Fighting, screwing, trying to get by: all of that was done in service to his own existence. And no one cared about his existence but him.

Except for maybe Remy LeBeau, and Logan half suspected that Remy LeBeau had always been busy enough with his own projects that he wouldn’t have noticed if Logan had fallen off the face of the earth—not for a long time, anyway.

Logan had not heard from Remy since before Alcatraz.

“So why did you leave the team?” Logan asked Remy over the phone one day, a week before Scott disappeared, running off to Alkali Lake to (presumably) get himself killed.

“Why did I leave?” Remy said. “How can a needle presume to sew when it has a hole in its back?”

“What?”

“The fact that they haven’t told you tells me that they don’t find it very important. And neither do I.”

Remy was out of the clinic then. Now he was just keeping in close contact with his sponsor and going to these NA meetings.

“That’s a real cop out,” Logan said.

“A real stick between the eyes, right,” Remy said. “I’ll tell you later, _cher_,” he said. “Step nine.”

Except that there wasn’t a step nine—not for Scott or the professor anyway. Logan knew he should call Remy and tell him about what had happened, what had _really _happened, with Jean and the professor and Scott, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to open up his phone. When he misplaced his cell phone charger, he didn’t look too hard for it. He let his phone drain of energy and go dormant.

He spent the long summer afternoons outside most days, finishing off all the projects the professor had given him: mending the fence, checking on the perimeter defense system, clearing away the trees that had died off during a recent drought. He hated the midday heat but worked through it anyway—relieved that he had the mindlessness of such a job to keep him occupied. Sometimes Rogue would come outside and join him. _Marie_, he thought. He was always glad to see her. They sidestepped the big issues—the cure and Jean—but still managed to talk naturally, as if nothing had really changed.

“You know what I think?” she said one day. She was sitting on the grass, propped up on her elbows. She was wearing less clothing these days—the same tank tops and midriff-bearing shirts that that girl Jubilee wore. “I think you and I and the others should have a little party again tonight.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said, but he didn't mention why. Didn't mention Storm.

The week before, he had been sitting next to the courtyard one evening, listening to the summer sounds of frogs and animals rustling in the woods, drinking a beer, and the kids had found him. Well, not the kids. _The team_. Bobby and Rogue and Kitty and Peter. And he still had the better half of a six pack with him, so he felt that it was only polite to share.

And they had a nice time, too. The five of them sat on the ground together and laughed and talked about stupid things like TV shows and mansion drama and slapped away the mosquitoes. He looked at Bobby and Rogue. They seemed fine together; he couldn’t pick up any trace of anxiety or distance. Just fondness. He’d been angry with Bobby at first—he’d mistakenly assumed that the kid had pressured Rogue into taking the cure—but now he understood that Rogue had wanted it, that she would have taken it regardless, boyfriend or no. She just couldn’t resist. And he understood that. He just wished she would have waited.

But in any case, Storm caught him drinking beer with the kids. Much to her credit, she didn’t break up the little soiree, didn’t send people to bed. She just waited for him to come inside. He found her sitting in the kitchenette, a book in front of her, a kettle on the stove.

He tried to slip past the doorway to head upstairs.

“Logan,” she said.

He loped back. He stood in the doorway.

“I’d appreciate it,” she said, “if you didn’t do that again.”

“What?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You know. Drink beer with the kids.”

He sighed and approached the table and put his hands on his hips. They were going to have a confrontation, yes. He’d spent the last few weeks delicately avoiding this kind of showdown, but now it seemed inevitable. “Why the hell not?”

She looked up at him, disbelieving. “Because they’re kids.”

“You gotta be shitting me.” He rolled his eyes. “Old enough to fight and die but not old enough to have a beer. Jesus Christ, Storm. You are . . . you are. That’s all I’m going to say.”

“That’s right, I am. In a different world, fine. But the fact remains that this is a school and we need to set a good example—not just for them but for the rest of the kids. And then there's the law. Do you have any idea of the kind of scrutiny we're under here? I just can’t condone underage drinking.”

“Then pretend you didn’t see it,” he said and turned.

“Logan—”

“Where I’m from they’d be old enough.”

“And this isn’t Canada, and Kitty is only seventeen anyway. All I’m asking is for you not to flout the rules like that. For God’s sake—” She rose to her feet. “What the hell is your problem?”

“My problem!” He turned around to face her again and squared off with her. Here was his opportunity: he had to take it. “You need to lay off.”

Her eyes widened. He could almost feel her heart speed up. “Excuse me?”

“Of Rogue,” he said, and he felt his own breathing quicken. “You think I haven’t seen the way you treat her? How dismissive you are of her? What? Because she isn’t ‘one of us’ anymore? She doesn’t say anything about it, but she knows how you feel. I can’t believe you. I thought you were a teacher.”

She leaned back. Her eyes flickered over him. Her gaze was clear and bright with anger. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’re supposed to educate kids regardless of whether or not you agree with them.” He turned away again and headed for the doorway.

But she wasn’t going to let him have the last word. “It’s not about her, Logan. It’s not about the choice she made. It’s about the fact that you condoned it.”

He felt his heart slow down. He felt the old waves of instinct roll back, that old adrenaline kick that told him he was being attacked.

She pointed her finger at him. “When you let her walk out of this house,” she whispered, “you let her buy into their bullshit. You let her think that she wasn’t good enough the way she was.”

“It was her choice!” he whispered harshly. “What? You want to take away a person’s right to choose what they want for themselves? Isn’t that why we fought at Alcatraz?”

She took a step toward him. “I don’t care about the choices other people make. But I care about our students. I’m appalled that she even felt that she had to do that, that she’d internalized their bullshit. And you allowed her to believe exactly what they wanted her to believe—that she had to be fixed. God Logan, don’t you understand?” She closed her eyes and took a breath and looked, suddenly, as though she might hurt him. She looked as if she wanted to reach for him, or summon something terrible.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. Felt nothing but exhaustion and disgust for this entire conversation. “It’s called compassion. You might try it sometime.” He walked out of the kitchen.

Now he sat with Rogue in the shade of an old oak tree. He knew it was almost time for lunch—they should go inside. Face the others. He should shower and look after the kids in the afternoon so that Storm could get some administrative duties done, but he really had no desire to move.

He looked over at Rogue. She seemed very pensive. And tired. She didn’t say much, but he knew that she was having a difficult time adjusting to life as a non-mutant among mutants. There were stares and whispers. He heard the whispers—he heard everything. And she must have, too.

She was waiting, he knew. Waiting to be done with this school thing so that she could go on with the rest of her life. Slip back into the world and pass for someone else.

“You okay, kid?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said quickly. Too quickly. She pulled at the grass.

“What?” he said.

She looked down. Her mouth tightened. She seemed to be deciding what she wanted to say next—if anything. Then she just said: “Bobby and I had sex.”

“Oh,” he said.

He had known. He had sensed something—a change in the air between Rogue and Bobby, something that masqueraded as familiarity.

She kept her eyes fixed on the ground. “I thought it would be . . . but it was . . .” She drew in a quick, shuddering breath. Her face tightened. She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear.

He dragged himself over and sat down next to her, his legs bent at the knees. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. Looked up at him. And then sniffled.

A thought occurred to him—one more terrible. He felt a surge of anger. “He . . . he didn’t pressure you, did he?”

If Bobby had messed with Rogue, then things would become very unpleasant for Bobby.

She looked up and shook her head. Sensed what he was asking. “No, oh no. If anything . . .” She wiped her eyes. “I pressured him. I wanted it. I’m not sure that he did. And—”

“Well . . .” he began. He reminded himself to stay calm. “Was it okay for you? Did he treat you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, Logan. It was fine.” She shook her head just slightly, embarrassed. “But . . . I just don’t think that he loves me.”

“Why would you think that?”

She shrugged. “It’s been really awkward.”

Logan tried not to roll his eyes. Bobby was just a kid. He didn’t know what he was doing, or how to treat a girl. You couldn’t hold him responsible for that, though. Not really. Especially not now—so soon after Alcatraz. The kid was all turned around. He'd come home from the war only to discover that his girlfriend had given up her mutation—just so that they could do this thing. Bobby was a good kid, and Logan felt for him. But he was also angry on behalf of Rogue. Couldn’t the kid at least try to step up?

“It’s okay,” Logan said after a brief moment, after he’d gathered himself enough to speak. “It’ll get better.” He put an arm around her shoulder. Squeezed her upper arm. Steeled himself against the inevitable discomfort. In a way this was good—she felt okay enough with him to share this. He should have been glad.

“You think so?” She blinked away her tears and looked up at him.

“Give it some time. Things will work themselves out.” Did he believe this? He decided to. She and Bobby had slept together; there was nothing he could say or do to change any of that. (What else could he have said to make this situation better?)

She leaned against him and sighed.

“But kid? Don’t be rushing into these things.”

“We didn’t rush,” she said. “We talked about it for, like, ninety-five hours straight. I just. I just don’t know if he still loves me.”

“Then wait before you do it again, and don’t do it if you’re not sure,” Logan said. “I promise you that it’ll be different when you’re sure.”

As soon as he said that, he wanted to take it back. He wasn’t the right person to make these promises. He’d occasionally wanted to be in love, and he’d found himself a few times in that interesting predicament, but the fact remained: his unknown past and his mutation governed his life. It drove a wedge between him and other people, and there was no use in pretending that he was like them, that he could be like them—that he could have a life. He could only watch his friends, like Remy, grow older and reach for something. Even if they failed to get what they wanted out of life, they still left things behind, still shared the arc of this journey with everyone else.

Rogue peered at him. “Thanks, Logan. I’m—I’m glad I could talk to you.”

He nodded. He felt so grateful then—grateful that this conversation hadn’t ended badly. Her frankness was difficult for him to process, and this conversation was still too precarious.

She knew how he felt. She smiled. And then hugged him.

“Just be careful,” he said when she pulled away. “Be careful with yourself.”

“I will,” she said, rising to her feet, smiling. “I promise, Logan. But you have to promise it too.”

“Huh?”

She was still smiling. “You have to be good to yourself. You know what I mean.” She turned and walked away.

He watched as she disappeared through the trees, wandering back to the house to have lunch. He had originally planned to join her but decided to stay outside for the time being, to stay away. Then, when it got too hot again, he moved deeper into the shade.


	3. Chapter 3

The early autumn sunlight was thick with the smoke from distant forest fires, and the day was stretching into afternoon. But Logan was just getting started. He was making the kids run drills. Well, not the kids—the team. Or, the team minus Rogue, plus that Jubilee girl. (Rogue was of course no longer part of the team, but Logan still considered her a full-fledged member—he couldn’t help it.)

This training was non-danger room, outside and sweaty and tedious—no powers allowed. Punches, squats, sit-ups, push-ups, wind-sprints. He made them do all these things, and then he made them do them again. “Run it again, Colossus,” he said when Peter had finished his last wind-sprint. He looked down at the stopwatch. The kid was strong but slow. He was clocking in a full two seconds after Kitty. That just wasn’t good enough.

“I sprained something,” he gasped, limping around in a small circle. He grimaced, his forehead tightening. “My ankle, I think.”

Logan paused, the stopwatch still in his hand. He almost told him to run it again anyway—to just run through the pain, and speed it up—but then he saw Storm come up over the hill. He caught a glimpse of her hair as it caught the sunlight and turned to look. She slowed down at the crest of the hill and shielded her eyes with one hand. He turned back to Peter. “Alright,” he said. “Go to the field house and ice it down.”

Kitty’s face was pink, her straight brown hair coming lose from its ponytail and hanging in front of her eyes. Bobby was bent over at the waist, hands on his knees.

The only one who seemed ready to go another round was Jubilee. He liked this girl. She was tough and willing, lithe and athletic. Faster than Kitty. More serious than Peter. She had something to prove, after all—she was the only one who hadn’t fought at Alcatraz. She also had a bone to pick: she’d been one of the kids kidnapped by Stryker. When she punched and kicked a target, and always so solemnly, Logan wondered whom she was really thinking about.

“Okay, that’s enough for today,” he said, nodding at them. “Stretch before you go inside. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”

Kitty flounced down on the grass, her legs splayed in front of her. Bobby sat next to her. Peter turned to limp toward the field house.

Logan turned and walked to meet Storm, who was just a short distance away. She stopped when she saw him start to approach.

“How did they do?” she asked when he was close enough and they were out of earshot.

“They’re getting better.”

“You’re hard on them,” she said, but she seemed glad. A little admiring maybe? Maybe. He was still trying to figure her out. She was tough—but not so tough anymore. He could imagine them becoming friends, if he tried.

They’d had a number of discussions throughout the summer—well, “discussion” was maybe too generous a label for the way things had played out. She usually prefaced each talk with, “You know, Logan, we appreciate your help, but . . .” And then she’d launch into some lengthy dissertation on how they’d _love_ to have him around, but it really wasn’t necessary, and as long as he kept his phone on and stayed within the Western Hemisphere, it would be good enough.

Usually he just listened to these one-sided conversations with an eyebrow cocked, or with one foot propped up on a coffee table. Sometimes he diverted his attention elsewhere—a crossword puzzle, a TV show. And tried not feel so insulted.

She thought he was giving something up. Really, she had no idea.

But poor Storm. She wasn’t having the greatest week. On Tuesday she’d broken her wrist in the danger room. They were running through a program that was supposed to simulate a major weapons launch, and Kitty phased through one missile, and Peter blocked another, but Bobby stumbled and panicked, and Storm, distracted, managed to hold back a missile but ended up getting thrown against the wall. Logan heard the crack.

“I know better than to do that, too,” she told him afterwards as he drove her to the emergency room. “I thought I was done with rookie mistakes.”

“Does it hurt?” he asked, glancing over at her. “Are you in pain?”

“Only my pride,” she said, straight faced, which meant that it must have hurt like motherfucker.

He waited with her four hours in the emergency room—two hours before they saw the doctor, ten minutes of consultation, and another hour of waiting before her wrist was set and bandaged. They talked. What else could they have done with themselves? They hadn’t yet forgiven each other—didn’t know how to ask, didn’t want to—but they had come to some uneasy understanding, some weird emotional stalemate. He watched a tennis match on TV while they waited and thought about her as these two women sprinted from one end of the court to the other, grunting and crying out when they nailed the ball. Storm’s toughness was irritating and comforting at the same time: He knew she’d always be there for him, no matter what he did or said, but that was part of the problem. She was gracious toward him, but cool. Her concern was impersonal. Teacher-like. She wanted him around for one simple reason: she didn’t want to be the only grown-up at 1407 Graymalkin. And at that point, he didn’t want to be alone either.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked, turning away from the TV. He sat down on the cot next to her with a bag of low-fat, low-cal animal crackers that tasted like over-baked flour. He offered her one.

“No thanks,” she said—but to the crackers. “Sure. Ask me anything.”

“This thing that you do,” he said. “This . . . thing.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What thing?”

“This weather thing.”

She seemed reluctantly amused. She must have thought he was flirting. (He wasn’t.) “Yeah?”

“When did you first know you could do it?”

“Oh,” she said, relieved, and he wondered what she thought he was going to ask. “I was a teenager when my mutation first manifested.”

He hated that word—_manifested_. “Well, it’s a hell of a trick,” he said.

She looked away. “It has its benefits and drawbacks.”

“I mean, how did happen? What, you were just walking along one day when the sky fucking opened up? What did people think?”

She held her wrist with one hand and looked over at him. “Pretty much,” she said. Then she looked away again, down at her wrist. “My people thought I was . . .” She kept her eyes downcast. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Okay,” she said, and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “They thought I was a goddess. In the African country where I was living at the time—they actually worshipped me.”

He said nothing. He let a long moment pass.

He could tell she was deeply embarrassed and pleased at the same time—pleased to have such a story in her cache. Embarrassed for all the really obvious reasons. And grateful, maybe, that he’d asked about her. That he actually wanted to know.

“How did that work out for you?” he said.

Her chin jutted forward. “How do you think?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

She was quiet. She was deciding.

He let another moment pass. Then he turned back to her. “So? Like, did they bring sacrifices? Huh?”

She just stared at him. “Gifts,” she said.

“Did you believe them?” he said. “Did you think you were a _goddess_?”

She went very still—deciding whether to be pissed off. Then she seemed oddly serene. She turned to look at him, really look at him. (For the first time, he felt strangely at peace with her—and scrutinized, too. He felt as though he was with Remy.)

“Well,” she said, “wouldn’t you?”

He couldn’t drag his eyes away from her. Then, luckily, she laughed. And that broke everything open—he laughed too.

She didn’t ask him about his life—she knew better. He couldn’t have told her anything, anyway. Well, that wasn’t true. Logan only had about twenty odd years banked in his memory, but the memories he had were bright and vivid because he worked on them, worked them over, pushed what he’d learned about himself and other people to the front and center of his mind. Most people just lived their lives, day in and day out, and let the details pass away, but Logan paid attention. He had to. He had nothing else.

He could account for every year that he could remember. He remembered Remy’s young face in front of him, telling him his name before disappearing into the landscape that held a nuclear reactor. Then there were the years he passed in Japan and Southeast Asia, and then coming back to the States where he found Remy LeBeau again—or where Remy LeBeau found him. He couldn’t trust the Cajun to tell him anything about his past, so he just kept moving, found himself drawn to the long spine of the Rockies. When he went to his first cage fight and they asked him his name he said Wolverine—he was learning to go with it by then. And things just happened to him. And then Rogue happened to him, and then all this Liberty Island shit, and then he fell in love with Jean Grey (always falling in love), and then he ended up here.

Now he looked down at her in the warm, hazy afternoon sunshine. He felt the sweat prick the back of his neck. The kids had retreated, tired and done for the day. “How’s your wrist?” he asked.

“Better,” she said. “Feeling much better today.”

“Thank God it was the left hand, not the right.”

She blinked at him.

“How would you sign all those checks?” he said.

“Like your paycheck?” She smiled. “Don’t worry, I got you direct deposit.”

“Huh?”

“The money,” she said. “It goes straight into your bank account.”

He crossed his arms. “I know what direct deposit is.” (How stupid did she think he was?) “But I don’t have a bank account.”

“You do now.” She stepped passed him and placed his hand lightly on his chest. “Don’t worry, I got you covered. Full benefits. Health insurance, too.”

“I don’t need health insurance,” he said, but this was a rude thing to say. He said it to distract himself from the fact that she’d seemed to accept that he was sticking around. She was granting him a _salary_, making all the arrangements for some kind of permanent set up. And she was touching him, too.

“Well, you never know,” she said. She was still smiling. “That’s why it’s called insurance.”

He took a step back.

“Are you coming inside?” she said.

“I’m going for a run,” he said, before she finished her question.

She also took a step back and folded her arms over her chest.

“I’ll see you,” he said, taking his iPod out of his pocket and unraveling the headphone cords. He put the headphones in his ear and started to head for the lake.

###

The iPod wasn’t his. It had belonged to Scott.

One afternoon he’d been in Scott’s office, going through some things, sifting through Scott’s shit, looking for a receipt Storm had asked him to find. She needed it for tax purposes.

Storm didn’t like to go into their rooms or their offices if she could help it. He’d figured this out early on, saw the way she avoided certain parts of the mansion and kept the doors closed, so he took it upon himself to retrieve the things she needed, to go to those shadowed, fraught places that she could not. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but he knew the place was haunted. One of these days, he knew, they’d just have to suck it up and face it together and go through all that crap. They’d have to dispose of all the meaningless objects that these people had left behind.

Scott had kept a lot of shit around. Logan pulled his desk apart to look for the missing receipt, wading through student files that dated back to 1993—bullshit essays and math quizzes. This guy never threw anything away. He chanced upon a pair of ticket stubs—_Rent_, June 13, 1997—and a photograph of him and Jean at Coney Island or something. Jean had on a pair of red-framed sunglasses and she seemed to be laughing, and Scott’s hands were wrapped around her waist as if pulling her back toward him. He wondered who had taken the picture. Storm probably, or some other friend. The camera’s gaze was familiar, loving. They were young then. Not that they’d ever been old.

Logan thought about tucking the picture in his pocket (maybe he’d give it to Storm, maybe he’d just keep it) but set it down on the desk instead. Then he moved around to the other side of the desk and lowered himself into the chair. He leaned back. So this was what it felt like to be Scott Summers. It smelled like a lot of paperwork. It smelled like tedium.

Logan was unsurprised. For the past several months, he’d been drafted into the afterlife of Scott and Jean, and he’d taken the opportunity to sniff out the dusty corners they’d called home, to learn all about the way they’d lived. He’d come to this conclusion: their life was not romantic. It was boring. They’d lived a boring fucking hermetic life. For one thing, they’d lived among all these damn kids—kids with runny noses and crying jags and hormonal weirdness and big, sad eyes—and on top of that, they’d had to deal with the professor. They’d lived under his watchful gaze. He was like _their dad_. It was as though they lived _at home_. Jesus Christ, Summers. Why didn’t you ever move out? Why didn’t you get her a little house somewhere? At least for privacy’s sake? What, you people never wanted to have noisy sex?

There was a poster on the wall that read _when things go wrong, you don’t have to go with_ _them. _Another one on the back of the door: _Make an effort, not an excuse_. Logan rolled his eyes and opened the desk’s bottom drawer to find some boxed-up games—Connect Four, Monopoly, Scrabble. A Rubik’s Cube sat on top of the dusty boxes. (Logan had never had the patience for those things.) He shut the drawer and then pulled out the top drawer. And that’s where he found Scott’s iPod.

He knew what an iPod was, but he had no desire to get one—didn’t care, didn’t like the commercials, didn’t feel the need to get on board with that.

He carefully unwound the cord. Put the buds in his ears. Then, hit one of the buttons.

The noise blew him out of the chair. He knocked it over, stumbled backwards, and slammed against the filing cabinet, all while struggling to tug the headphones out of his ears. Holy God! Summers had been deaf!

Ears still buzzing from the assault, he climbed to his feet, shook his head and held the iPod in one hand, the headphones in another. He hit play again. He could hear the jangly music—it was still so loud. He ran his thumb over the controls, figured out how to adjust the volume. When he was sure it was safe, he put the earphones back in his ears. Gently now. “_Red skies at night_,” sang the voice. “_Whoa oh, whoa oh oh oh oh oh_.” He hit forward and listened some more. Then he hit forward again.

Summers had a lot of songs, and they all seemed very much the same. He recognized some of the names—Billy Idol, REM, U2. Some of the bands seemed a little more obscure—Echo and the Bunnymen, Public Image Limited, Joy Division. Obscure to him, anyway. He guessed this stuff was from the eighties. He’d spent the eighties in Japan. And it really wasn’t his type of music anyway. It seemed so grim and moody. He usually went for stuff a little jazzier. Salsa maybe. Motown. Hendrix. Springsteen at the very least.

So: everything about him wanted to hate Summers’s music. It was so whiny and white bread, so very British. But there was something catchy about it. Something eminently danceable. He kept the headphones on as he patrolled the mansion that night. Learned to anticipate the music’s quirky turns. Worked his way through the Eurythmics section. He paused in the rec room and checked the windows, and then checked out his reflection. He thought about dancing. He’d recently taken the kids to see a movie about a tall, dorky kid who danced his way to popularity during a school assembly. He hadn’t thought the movie was that great, but the kids had loved it. They’d laughed and laughed.

Soon he was working out with the iPod. Listening to it while he performed whatever mindless chores Storm had set out for him. When he was in the garden, he listened to a band called The Smiths. (He wondered if they were a family gig or something—was “Smith” their last name?) In the bathroom, when he was laying some tile, he listened to Tears for Fears. While jogging around the school grounds, he listened to Duran Duran. “Hungry Like the Wolf.” That had been one of Summers’s favorites—it was on heavy rotation. But Logan preferred “Save a Prayer,” which he listened to each night while smoking his customary cigar. Then he topped that off with REM’s “Radio Free Europe.”

And that was where Rogue found him one night. He was engrossed in the music that he didn’t hear her sneak up on him. Startled, he pulled the headphones out of his ears and turned around.

“Wow,” she said. “That was a first.”

“Sorry,” he said. “This thing.” He held up the iPod. “It’s kind of addictive.”

She sidled up to him, hands in her back pockets. She reached over and took the iPod from his hands. “You got an iPod? You? Holy shit.”

“Swiped it. From Scott’s office.”

She held the iPod in one hand and skimmed her thumb over the controls. He saw that her nails were painted and manicured. “Nice,” she said. “We always used to hear him listening to this stuff in the garage.” She looked up at him, straight into his eyes. _Poor Scott,_ she seemed to say. _All that depressing music. _

“It’s not as impressive as his motorcycle,” Logan said. “But what can I say. Taste doesn’t always transfer from one thing to another.”

“‘Don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad.’ Right?”

“Huh?”

She laughed. “Never mind, Logan.”

Then she stopped smiling and went still. She seemed sad. He knew that things weren’t going well with Bobby. Rogue—Rogue had fallen into the trap most women fall into: she thought that sex could mend an already-dysfunctional relationship. He felt like pounding Bobby sometimes. Really. But he forced himself to hold back. He knew it wasn’t what she wanted.

And on this night, he didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer. And anyway, all of his advice was now mixed up with song lyrics. If he’d opened his mouth, he would have said something like “there is nothing fair in this world” or “if it’s not love then it’s the bomb that will bring us together.”

He didn’t want to dispense any advice. Not now. Not tonight. It was three months since Jean died, and what he wanted most of all was to lean against Rogue and tell her everything, tell her what he’d seen and what he’d done. He wanted to tell someone who’d listen. He just wanted to tell her that when he’d killed her, when he’d made that choice, it wasn’t her—but then it was. He went over it in his mind, again and again, and he could never decide on the exact moment when Phoenix had left and Jean had come back to him.

“Logan,” Rogue whispered.

He looked up to find her staring at him, her brown eyes wide and pooling with the light from the terrace.

“Logan,” she said again. “Come on. Let’s fight.”

He put Scott’s iPod in his pocket and walked with her into the moonlit courtyard. There he taught her the gritty details of a take-down, and the ways to hurt someone—all the body’s soft places. _Go for the ears_, he told her. Ears were something people didn’t protect.

This was their new secret. Rogue had left the team, but he was adamant that she continue to get an education. From him. And now more than ever. She didn’t have her mutation to put between her and some asshole, some physical threat. And not being a mutant didn’t save her from the world; she was still in the world, and the world was still filled with terrible things. She’d be moving out within the next year, going to college, and that was fine, he wanted her to move on (and God only knew where he might be by then)—but he wanted her to take this with her, this skill.

He taught her how to block, how to kick, gave her the secrets he didn’t even share with Kitty. Kitty, of course, could just go through things. Rogue could not. Her bare skin was an opening. Whatever defense she’d had against the world was gone.

She went to execute a take-down, a sweep of his leg, and he caught her by the arm and pinned her on the ground, held her in a lock. Her face was pressed against the ground. He could feel her exhale with defeat. Her muscles relaxed. Her legs went still beneath him. She must have tasted dirt.

He let her go. Stood up. She rolled over to face him.

“You weren’t fast enough,” he told her, but he wanted to tell her _never give up._ He held out his hand to help her up. She pressed her hand against his and struggled to her feet. “Again,” he said. “Run it again.”


	4. Chapter 4

When Logan got to the classroom, it was already too late. Storm’s desk was overturned and shoved against a wall. Books and papers were scattered from one end of the room to the other, and a map of the world was hanging precariously from just one tack. Asia Minor on its side.

The classroom was empty of students (they’d evacuated themselves to the rec room, and one of them had run to get him), but Storm was on the ground, trying to prop herself up with her good wrist. He rushed to her.

“Are you okay?” he said, reaching for her, wrapping his hand around her arm.

“Yeah,” she said, but she was shaking. She clutched his arm as she pulled herself to her feet. She didn’t look at him as he helped her into a nearby chair.

“What the eff happened?” he said.

(Yes, he said this. “What the eff” was his new token phrase. When school started, Storm had told him that they both needed to cut back on their language. She also had a love for colorful words, but she managed to turn it off in front of the kids. Logan was less successful; his self-censoring merely resulted in not-so-discreet omissions and substitutions. And worse yet, the kids had picked up on it. He passed by the rec room the other day to hear two brothers arguing over the remote. “What the eff, Zach,” one said. “I was watching that effing video.”)

Storm shook her head, still holding onto Logan’s arm with her good hand. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. She seemed distracted, upset. Her shoulders were tight and bunched up. She didn’t bring her eyes to meet his. “It was Sam,” she finally volunteered. “He just . . . flipped out for some reason.” She glanced up at the door. “Took off. I don’t know why or where.”

Logan tightened his hand around her upper arm. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. Then her face tightened. She was struggling not to cry.

“Hey,” he said.

She pulled her hand away and shielded her eyes. “I’m . . . fine,” she managed. “Logan . . .”

“It’s okay,” he said, bending forward.

“You need to find him,” she said, swiveling away from him. “Before he runs away. I can’t—” Her voice stopped with the quiet flow of tears. She stood and walked away from him, her hand still covering her eyes. Her heels clicked along the wooden floor as she fled the room to go find a place to cry.

He stood there. Tried not to look at the room in its disarray.

Outside the autumn air was warm and dry—Indian summer. Leaves crunched under his feet. He could smell the gunpowder from nearby hunters and knew that he really needed to find the kid before he got mistaken for a deer. He took another whiff of the air and picked up on something else. The kid was heading for the east side of the campus.

Logan took off, sprinting past the lawn and the withering garden and into the glade of trees. He caught Sam trying to climb over the wooden fence. “Hey!” he shouted, dashing over to the fence and reaching up to grab the kid’s leg before he swung it over. “Get down here.”

The boy let go and tumbled down and landed on top of Logan.

“Goddammit,” Logan said, groaning. The kid had him pinned.

Sam scrambled to his feet, but he didn’t run. He looked down at Logan. “It was an accident!” he said. Then, he turned around, bent forward at the waist, and threw up.

Logan scurried to get out of the way of the vomit splatter. “Jesus,” he said, his hand outstretched against the ground. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

And then Sam was crying. He straightened, wiped his mouth, looked at Logan and started to sob.

Logan pushed himself to his feet and stumbled in the boy’s direction. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, pal.”

Sam flinched, bringing his hands up in front of him. “Mr. Logan, please don’t hurt me! I didn’t mean it!”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Logan said, taking a step back.

Sam turned around again, braced himself against the fence, and threw up once more.

Logan just stood there and watched. He didn’t know if he should pick Sam up and haul him back to the mansion, or if he should just let him finish crying and puking. He didn’t want to touch the kid, either, even though something about Sam begged to be held and comforted. He wondered what Scott would do.

He wasn’t quite sure how old Sam was—he guessed twelve or thirteen. Usually the boy passed unnoticed at the mansion. There was nothing about him that stood out or made people pause. He wasn’t strange looking, and he wasn’t all that outgoing. He just had an Appalachian accent—the only thing that set him apart from the others.

“Are you okay?” Logan asked, but he didn’t draw any closer to Sam.

Sam straightened and turned around. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I always throw up when I use my powers. I can’t help it.”

“Well, that seems as good a reason as any to avoid using them. What happened back at the mansion? What did you do to Ms. Munroe?”

Sam tensed again. He balled his hands into fists and locked his arms against his sides. “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean to hurt Ms. Munroe!”

Logan held up his hands. “Okay! She’s fine, she’s fine. Calm down. But what are you doing?”

Sam was still. He relaxed his hands. He seemed to carefully consider what he was going to say next. “My horse.”

“Yeah?”

“My horse is having . . . a problem.”

Logan let Sam lead him to the stables. He wondered, just idly, how this kid had come into possession of a horse. Storm had once mentioned that Sam was from a poor family.

When they got to the corner of the stable where Sam’s horse was kept, Sam put his hands over the slats and reached out. The large brown horse snorted and wandered over.

“My horse is totally knocked up,” Sam said. “See?”

Logan’s eyes snapped back to Sam. “Huh?”

“Look at her. She’s huge. I can’t believe you and Ms. Munroe didn’t notice.”

No, they hadn’t noticed. Neither he nor Storm had really been paying close attention to the animals—they had a few dozen mutant students to attend to. An unprecedented influx of kids. An unstable political situation to monitor. A newly minted team to train. What the eff.

“Well how the hell did the horse get knocked up in the first place?” Logan said.

Sam gave Logan a sideways glance. “Another horse.”

Logan reached out and touched the mare. She was indeed huge—distended abdomen, swollen and off tilt. Underneath her hide something was definitely going on. She had a secret that she didn’t mind sharing. “I mean, I thought we kept these animals separate from one another.”

Sam stopped petting the horse and dropped down from the slats. He shrugged. “When horses get knocked up, they stay that way for a year. Sometimes more. I got her almost a year ago. She probably got knocked up before then.”

Logan shook his head. “Okay, first of all, stop saying that. Don’t say that around the other kids.”

“What? Knocked up? Why not?”

“It’s just not a very nice thing to say.” Logan glanced over at the horse. “Don’t worry. We’ll, uh, take care of it.”

“I don’t want Ms. Munroe to give my horse away!” he said, and tears shone in his eyes again. “I love this horse more than my life. She’s all I’ve got. I’d die without her.”

“Okay, okay,” Logan said quickly. He still wasn’t used to the kind of exaggeration kids constantly employed. It disturbed him. “She’s not gonna give your horse away, kid. Trust me.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah,” Logan said. He knew that Storm seemed strict—it was just the way she dealt with the world—but he was certain that she’d never give away a kid’s animal. He put his hand on Sam’s back. “Let’s go inside.”

On the way in, Sam looked up at Logan and asked him another question. “Are you and Ms. Munroe ever going to, like, get together? Like boyfriend and girlfriend?”

Logan dropped his hand from Sam’s back. “What?”

Sam looked straight ahead and tried to hide a small smile. “Never mind.”

###

He sent Sam upstairs and went to find Storm. She was back in the empty classroom, crouching down to pick up some books and papers with her good hand. Her other hand was still wrapped up in a cast.

“I got him,” he said. He surveyed the clutter. Sam hadn’t done any real damage, but he’d certainly made things messy. “Good God. Don’t. I’ll clean this up.”

“You shouldn’t have to. Neither of us should have to. Logan—” She straightened and looked at him. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. She said, “I’m sorry about before.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for.” He took a step forward.

She backed up and leaned against the desk and held her broken wrist against her abdomen.

He wanted very much to just go to her. He wished she’d drop the bullshit posturing. “What happened?” he said.

Her fingers grazed her cast. “It wasn’t his fault.” Her eyes met his. “I can’t be the professor. That’s what happened. He was the consummate teacher. He taught us how to control our powers. How not to hurt people. He helped Scott and Jean . . . and me. And I can’t help them the way he could—” Her gaze darted away. She slipped off the desk and went to the board. Straightened the map.

He crossed the room and went to stand behind her. “You’re doing fine.”

She cleared her throat. “God,” she whispered. “Just look at this place. It’s a fucking disaster.”

He stood there. Put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what things were like before. Before . . . all that. But what you’re doing doesn’t seem so far off course.”

She finished fixing the map but didn’t turn around.

He could tell she was going to cry again, and that she was doing everything within her power to swallow another small rupture. He paced quickly to the door and closed it. Then he came back to where she stood. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Come here,” he whispered.

She drifted toward him. He wrapped his arms around her and felt her collapse into him. She was crying, he knew—and not because of this Sam shit. Because she missed the professor so, so much.

He wanted to touch her hair but didn’t. Instead, he waited until her tears seemed to slow and then decided to break the news about Sam’s horse.

“What?” she said, pulling away from him. She sniffled. “You’re kidding.”

“I guess that’s why he’s upset,” Logan said. “He was all agitated and excited about it. And I looked and saw for myself. That horse is huge. It’s either pregnant or has a serious stomach tumor.”

“I’ll have to call the vet. Dammit.” She moved to the other side of the desk and dried her tears with the back of her hand. “I wonder what that’s going to cost.”

###

That night he sat on Rogue’s bed and told her everything. Well, everything except the part about Storm’s emotional upset. That part he withheld.

“He kept saying it over and over again,” Logan explained. “Knocked up. He kept calling the horse ‘knocked up.’ Like it was a completely acceptable way of describing a pregnant horse.”

Rogue laughed and laughed. She was sitting at her desk, working on some college application shit, but she swiveled around for this story. “Well, where he’s from, it probably is a valid way of describing a pregnant horse. Sam is a total hick. And I say that with fondness,” she added, “because one usually knows another.”

“You’re not a hick.”

“You should see where I’m from. Mississippi is, like, God’s country. Even the good parts have a lot of hicks.”

“You’re not a hick,” he repeated.

“Well I'm not a southern belle, Logan. So what are you going to do about the horse?”

“Storm called a vet. I guess the situation just needs to be monitored. The horse could foal tomorrow or three weeks from now. Who knows.”

Rogue nodded. “Well Logan, sounds like you saved the day again.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “Whatever.”

“Pregnant horses everywhere are grateful for your compassion and understanding.”

He glanced at the papers on her desk. “How are those college applications coming?”

She looked back at her desk and then picked up her pen. Twirled it around. “They’re, you know. Okay. Bobby wants me to apply to the same schools he’s applying to. Yale and Harvard and Penn. Yeah.” She looked back at him. “He actually suggested Barnard. That way, if he gets into Columbia we can be together.”

“And?”

“And I’m applying to Stony Brook, Binghamton, Albany, and Plattsburgh. I mean, let’s be real. I could never get into those schools. And I could never afford them if I did get in.” She turned away. “Bobby and Kitty are both really smart. They’ll probably get into some of those schools.”

“Hey,” he said. “You’re smart.”

“There’s smart and then there’s smart. I’m okay. But Bobby and Kitty are, like, 1600-on-the-SAT smart or whatever. That’s just the way it goes.”

He hated the fact that Rogue didn’t think she was smart—felt it like a personal affront. He thought she was very smart—smarter than Bobby, no doubt. Bobby was analytical; more interested in how the world worked rather than what it meant. Rogue was witty, clever and daring. (Bobby would never have stolen a ride in the back of Logan’s trailer—he would have asked first. And Logan would have said no.)

“Oh well,” she said. “My application essay bites it. I have nothing to write about. Nothing that I’m willing to share, anyway.” She gave a small, wily smile. “I’d write about how you and I met, except that I don’t think most admissions committees would want to enroll a girl who frequented cage fights in Northern Canada and who almost got offed by Magneto. It’s just not the kind of diversity that they’re looking for.”

“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t know what to say. The whole thing was well outside of his area of expertise. He’d leave that to Storm.

There was a slight rap at the door even though it was slightly ajar.

“Come in,” Rogue said.

Bobby pushed it open and stood in the threshold. His gaze wandered from Rogue to Logan. He smiled, but the smile was self-conscious.

“Are you ready?” he said. “Do you want to go?”

Rogue looked up and gave him a quick, furtive smile. Then she looked back at Logan. “We’re going to see a movie. Can we borrow the car?”

“Uh, sure,” Logan said, leaning back so that he could get the keys out of his pocket. He handed her the keys and she stood from her desk. “Just be back by curfew,” he said—it was something he just needed to say, but it felt so dowdy. He could feel the promise of sex hovering in the air. Jesus, why even pretend they were going to see a movie?

Rogue was already at her dresser, taking out her toothbrush. “I have to brush my teeth. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Logan watched as she left the room. Then he turned his attention to Bobby. He stood from the bed and approached the kid. Stopped when they were just inches apart. “What movie theater are you going to?”

“The one at the mall,” Bobby replied quickly.

“How’s the college application thing coming? Rogue said that you’re applying to some pretty big places.”

“I’m aiming high, but I have a few safeties.”

“Do you think you’ll get in?”

Bobby averted his gaze and crossed his arms. “It’s a crapshoot. That’s what they say.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

This is where Logan should have said something to Bobby. This is where he should have told the kid that he needed to step up or step off—that if he wasn’t serious about being with Rogue for any kind of long-term thing, he needed to stand down. Allow her to get on with the rest of her life and find someone new, someone outside of this little inbred mutant universe. She was too good for Bobby, he thought. The problem was that she didn’t see it that way.

Bobby was going to break her heart. Logan just wished he’d get it over with.

She came back through the door and pushed past them. “Where do you want to eat?” she asked Bobby.

“Anywhere. I’m hungry.”

Like the wolf, Logan thought. “Be careful,” he said. (He had to say that.) “Call me if you need anything.”

Rogue smiled at him, clutched Bobby’s arm and led him out the door.

Logan didn’t know what time they got in, but later than morning he saw that a piece of paper had been slipped under his door. A note. He unfolded it. It was a cartoonish drawing of a horse with big eyes, long eyelashes, and a huge, inflated stomach. The horse was winking at him. There was a heading: “KNOCKED UP: A Tale of Equine Impropriety!” Then, the caption: _A mare in trouble has a friend in Mr. Logan_. He wondered how long Rogue had stayed up last night drawing this. He tucked the note in his dresser drawer and went down to breakfast.

###

Suddenly Sam was everywhere. Everywhere Logan was, anyway. Logan would find him standing outside of his door in the morning or lingering in the kitchen when he was trying to get a cup of coffee. “Mr. Logan,” he said one morning, breathless, when they passed each other in the hallway. “I got an A on my math test.”

“That’s nice, kid,” Logan said.

If Sam picked up on Logan’s reluctance to give a shit, he didn’t seem to care. In the kitchen, he sidled up next to Logan and almost stepped on his heels while relating some lengthy narrative about his horse’s dietary habits. “Ms. Munroe told me that the vet says everything is going to be okay. Do you think it’ll be a colt or a filly?” he asked Logan.

“Yes,” Logan said.

“No, Mr. Logan, I asked you—”

Storm stepped into the room. “Sam? Kitty needs some help in the yard.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped. “But it’s Artie’s day.”

“Artie has the flu. And I’m asking you.”

Sam exhaled dramatically and headed for the doorway. Logan listened as his footsteps retreated down the hallway.

Storm just looked at him. “Logan, I know he’s annoying. But you could, you know, at least pretend to care.”

“I care,” Logan said, picking up his sandwich. Christ, he cared. He just wanted something to eat. He didn’t want to fight with Storm—it would ruin his lunch. “I care about him. I don’t care about how many times the horse crapped yesterday.”

“Speaking of the horse,” Storm said, tapping her fingers against her arm, “we have to start monitoring that situation. She could foal any day now and we have to help her. She can’t be alone for the delivery or something could happen. That’s what the vet said.”

Logan closed his eyes. Then he opened them. “Didn’t horses just used to do this on their own? In the wild?”

Storm said nothing.

“I mean, really.”

“Logan,” she said, “I don’t know much about farm animals. I’m just telling you what the vet said. He left instructions.”

Logan set his sandwich down. He wouldn’t be able to eat now—fuckin’ forget it. “Fine. Whatever. Now I know how Joan of Arc felt.”

“Huh? Jesus Christ, Logan.” She took a step back. “I have enough kids around here as it is. Do whatever you want. But don’t be such a pain in the ass about it.” She spun on her heels and walked out of the room.

Later that afternoon he sat in the stable and read and listened to the iPod. He leaned his head against the wall and watched the horse paw at the straw. He wondered if it was nesting or something. He didn't know anything about farm animals either.

He climbed to his feet and peered through the stable door at the horse. She came over and peered back at him. On the iPod, a woman sang something about a guy named Joey being drunk and passed out on the floor—he thought of Remy. He still hadn’t found his cell phone charger. But that was just an excuse. He didn’t call Remy because he didn’t feel like having to account for his time at the mansion and still didn’t want to talk about Alcatraz.

He touched the horse’s mane and patted its neck. He’d been a shit, but that was just the way it went. Truth was, he was grateful—grateful to Storm and Rogue and the kids and everyone else. He knew he was being given some kind of second chance, a chance he didn’t deserve. He didn’t know how to frame it, couldn’t figure out how to consider this within the constraints of his life. He didn’t know a lot, but he knew that a guy like him probably shouldn’t be hanging around a place like a school. Not around people like this. They were one thing; he was another.

The delicate peace that had been brokered between humans and mutants left him searching for a purpose. When he’d joined the X-Men, he’d assumed he’d be doing a lot of fighting—he assumed that this was why the professor wanted him around. He figured that his position at the mansion was to be a point guard or an attack dog—to do the dirty work, the heavy-lifting, the gritty behind-the-scenes stuff that no one wanted to do. But life had turned out differently; overnight he’d gone from a lone wilderness guy to a guy with people, with a domestic life, with responsibilities, and with no one to guide him. He didn’t have the professor anymore—none of them did. And the kids looked to him for something, something he didn’t know how to give. He knew they wanted comfort; they wanted someone to tell them that being a grown-up mutant in the world wasn’t such a bad thing. And he just couldn’t do that for them.

Still, there was this: The time a girl brought him milk right before bedtime because she’d heard he didn’t sleep, and her mother had always done the same thing for her. The friendship he had with Rogue and some of the others. Every day that he stayed there, every day that he didn’t run, that he helped, that he comforted some kid or offered some bit of bland, useless advice, was a day he put between himself and Stryker’s thesis.

(_Stryker’s thesis: “You’re an animal.”_

_Proof that Stryker’s thesis was correct: His whole life, up until now._

_Proof that Stryker was full of shit: Now._)

He felt inside of his coat pocket for a cigar and his lighter, and the horse went very still. She turned her head to the side but kept one eye on him, big and wide. Pricked her ears.

He remembered something.

And then he was racing from the stable, sprinting back to the mansion, tearing through the door and barging into Storm’s office. He didn’t bother to knock.

She glanced up from behind her desk, but she didn’t look startled. She just put her pen down.

“I remembered something,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow.

He struggled to catch his breath. “Horses—they don’t foal if you’re around them. They won’t. They wait until you’re gone.”

She blinked. Then she said, “Yeah. The vet mentioned that. But he said that we still need to do the best we can—”

“No, stop,” he said. “I remembered that. I mean, I _remembered._”

“Oh. _Oh_.” She stood from the chair. “You remembered. Well that’s good. Right?”

He took a couple of seconds to catch his breath. Suddenly it all seemed very stupid—so he remembered some strange detail about horse maternity, so what. He didn’t remember how or why. What conclusions could he draw? That sometime during his long-ass life he’d been around horses. “Yeah.”

She stared at him. Forced a smile.

He turned away at an angle and put his hands on his hips. “Forget I said anything.”

“Well, do you remember anything else?”

He exhaled and glanced over at her. “No.” He looked at the doorway. He thought of leaving. Instead, he walked over and lowered himself into the chair across from Storm’s desk.

She sat back down. “Should I ask?”

He just stared at her.

“If you want to talk,” she said.

He shook his head. “No.”

A long moment passed. They didn’t look at each other.

Then she looked up. “We could go for a walk,” she said. “Work is done for the day.”

###

They didn’t go for a walk. They went for a drink. Out behind the stables, he handed her a Molson and she popped it open without delay.

“I can’t believe how quickly the temperature has changed,” she said. “Last week it was in the seventies. Tomorrow it could snow.”

“Will it?”

She shrugged. “It could.” She turned and surveyed the land around them. “Winter’s here, my friend. No turning back.”

He took his cigar out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it back. He felt for the iPod.

Storm continued to look at the graying landscape. Logan wondered what she was thinking about. More than a year had passed since Jean had died—the first time—and when Logan looked at Storm, he couldn’t help but think about how much her life had changed. His life had changed too, but hers must have seemed peculiar to her. She never talked about it. Forget him—he could leave tomorrow. But Storm was bound to this place, to this life. And the kids knew it, too. Logan was just a party favor, a novelty, something to be passed around, but Storm was theirs forever.

“The kids,” he said. “Do you think they’ll get into college?”

She turned to look at him. “Who? Bobby and Kitty and Rogue?” She nodded. “Of course. Our students always get into college. Whether or not they’ll get into schools like Harvard—that’s another question.”

“What about you?” he said quickly. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere special.” She put her hands in her pockets. “Scott wrote my application essay for me. We went to the same college. It was in the city. Jean was down there too. Medical school.” She looked down at the ground and nudged a patch of dead grass with her toe. “We were all together then.”

He ran his fingers along the rim of his beer can.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “To apply for college.” She cleared her throat. “Rogue will get in.”

He looked up. He knew that Storm knew what he was thinking: that he’d really miss Rogue. That he’d miss Rogue more than he’d ever missed anybody. But she didn’t say anything.

“Good,” he said. “I’m glad.”

“She’s lucky,” Storm said. “Lucky to have you as a friend.” She picked up her beer from the fence beam and took a swig. “But, you know, I think it will be good for her to move on. I mean—she’s always welcome here. But it’s been hard for her.”

Logan tucked his hands against his sides in an attempt to warm them. He knew that Storm meant well. She’d been upset and offended and dismayed by Rogue’s choice, but she was trying. Trying to get past it. Her whole life had been spent in service to this mutant cause—this militancy that he didn’t quite understand—so Rogue’s choice seemed political to her, and deeply personal.

Perhaps what was most unsettling to Storm was the way in which the world had continued in spite of the cure. Mutants now took it and went on with the rest of their lives. The controversy had died down. People accepted it as a valid option. There was a lot of talk about choice, about personal agency, about empowering mutants to make their own lives—the same rhetoric Logan had been drawn to—but deep down inside, he knew that Storm was right. The cure wasn’t about choice. It was about being made fit for society. It was about being made acceptable. It was about what they wanted. And there was something deeply hateful about it. He, more than anyone else, understood this.

He thought about saying something but didn’t. The sun was setting, and it was time to go back to their responsibilities, back to the long evening inside.

###

Days passed. It got cold but it didn’t snow. No foal. Logan spent his nights watching the horse. He didn’t sleep anyway, and winter temperatures didn’t bother him. He read a lot and memorized the lyrics to songs he had no desire to sing.

One morning he was getting dressed after just having showered, feeling wrecked from another long night, feeling flattened out, when he heard quick footsteps approach his door. And then, a series of knocks.

He opened the door to find Kitty. She looked restless.

“Have you seen Rogue?” she said. “Is she with you?”

“No. Why?”

“She didn’t show up to class. Storm asked me to ask you. Logan—” She pushed past him into his room. “She and Bobby like _broke up_,” she whispered. “I’m afraid that she ran away.”

“What?” He was already reaching for his jacket.

“He said she was really upset.”

Logan grabbed his car keys. “Where would she go?”

Kitty shook her head. “I have no idea. Maybe she didn’t go anywhere. Maybe she’s just outside.”

He nudged Kitty out of the way—not ungently, but not gingerly either—and headed down the hallway. He glanced up to find Bobby standing near the window seat, arms wrapped around his chest. Logan just paused to give him a good old judgmental once-over. Bobby later. Right now he needed to find Rogue.

He raced downstairs and through the hallway and toward the garage. Took a whiff of the air to see if he could pick up anything, but there were too many smells.

She was in the garage. He knew when he passed through the door. He could smell her—the scent of her hair and her tears. He scanned the row of cars and headed for the one nearest to the doors. His.

She was sitting in the backseat.

He went to other side and slowly opened the door and slid into the seat. “Going somewhere?”

She turned away from him and looked out the opposite window. “I just wanted to be alone.” She was crying—but silently. Her face was wet with tears.

“Ah,” he said. “Do you want me to leave?”

She was quiet for several moments. “No,” she whispered. She turned back to face him. “Bobby said that he’s not sure how he feels about me, so it’s not right for us to sleep together anymore.” She brought her hand to her forehead, and her breath quickened with tears. “I don’t know if I love him anymore either, but I just thought I’d try, you know?” She started to sob. “You were right.”

“Right? About what?”

“Everything.” Then she really started to cry—the way a girl cries, all misery and pent-up emotion. No holds barred.

He drew closer to her. Clutched her shoulder.

“It’s over,” she said. “Everything. All of it. It’s all over.”

He wrapped his arms around her, and she collapsed into him. “No. It isn’t.” He touched her hair. “It’s just beginning. I promise.” He pushed her back, looked at her. Looked her straight in the eyes. “I promise you.” He took a breath. “Forget about him. This place—this is just a school, hon. You’ll go off to college. You’ll meet . . . other people.” Yes, she’d meet other people. Other people not like them. Bobby had done her a favor. There was a big world out there, bigger than she realized—

“Logan,” she said. She had stopped crying. She stared at him. Then, she moved closer.

He knew what she was doing (and knew, maybe, all along) but he couldn’t stop her. She kissed him, bring her lips to his, sliding her tongue past his teeth.

He pushed her away. “Rogue,” he said.

He couldn’t describe what he felt in that moment. Sadness. Guilt. Confusion. A sense of profound disorientation. Newfound precariousness. And beyond that—beyond what he wanted to admit—a base desire. It was so wrong, but that was nothing new, and that was the sad part: he’d spent his life living wrong, loving the wrong people, being in the wrong places.

But this—this was worse.

He stared at her. “Rogue,” he said again.

She pulled back and looked away. Folded her hands in her lap and looked down. “That’s not my name,” she whispered and opened the car door. Stepped out. Left him there.

He pushed his door open. “Rogue, wait.”

She was heading for the door to go back to the mansion. Then she turned around, her face tight with anguish, her eyes bright with tears. “What!” she shouted. “What is so wrong with me?” Then she spun around again.

“Nothing,” he said. “Wait.”

She opened the door and ran.

He chased after her. Called her name. She tore through the hallways of the mansion.

“Rogue—”

She darted past a group of kids who were just getting out of biology.

“Rogue—”

She headed up the staircase, taking two or three steps at a time and flew down the hallway. He ran after her. She opened her door.

“Rogue, please,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

She didn’t turn around. “You’re all talk.”

He stepped back. And that’s when she turned to face him, her body in the doorway.

“You’re so full of shit,” she said. She took a deep breath and her eyes filled with tears again. “You don’t know what it’s like. You _think_ you do, but you have no idea. Storm hates me for taking the cure, but you’re worse. You pity me. That day when I left—you told me you knew what it was like to be afraid of your power.” She clutched the doorframe. “You’re such a liar. You _don’t_ know what it’s like. You don’t know what I would give to be you. At least Storm’s honest. She thinks that one mutation’s the same as another—but you know that it’s not true, you know there are good mutations and bad mutations, and you know that you’re goddamn lucky and you fucking sit there and act like it’s a curse—”

She turned away. Then she grabbed the door. “I wish I’d never met you. I wish I didn’t know that somebody like you existed.” She slammed the door. In his face.

He didn’t know if he flinched. He just remembered the sound the door made when she slammed it, the silence of the hallway, the emptiness. He stood, staring at the wood. Then he turned around. Two faces peered at him from one doorway, and a girl stood half-in and half-out of the bathroom. When they saw him look up at them, they pulled away. To them this was just drama, something they could watch. They could turn away and go back to their lives. To him this had really happened. _This really happened_, he thought, and realized he had nowhere to go.


	5. Chapter 5

He wanted to sleep in the trees. At least the moon was thoughtful in her turning-away; she waxed and waned on schedule, rose and set in connection with the sun. But Rogue’s rejection of him, her complete and categorical denial of his existence, was so swift and absolute that he couldn’t fathom it. He tried cornering her after class, tried meeting her before dinner. He made himself available. But she didn’t care. She turned away from him or looked past him at something else.

He was inconsolable. He had underestimated the uncompromising nature of a teenage girl’s feelings—her deep-seated, fully formed sense of hatred and longing. 

And he’d handled the situation badly. Her words were very much with him; he thought about them all the time, wanted to go back to the point of undoing, wanted to go back to unmake all those promises. He hadn’t understood how she saw him, and he was foolish, foolish to think that she saw him as some benign friend, some trustworthy confidante. He knew what he was. He always knew. And those days they spent outside in the sun—they seemed so trivial now.

One day, one Saturday afternoon, he was sitting in the darkening kitchen by himself listening to “Mad World” over and over again. _The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had._ The lights flicked on. He turned around to find Storm in the doorway and tugged the earphones from his ears.

“Logan,” she said. “I was calling for you.” She gave him a swift up-and-down glance.

“Sorry,” he muttered and turned around again.

“I need to, uh, go to the store,” she said.

“I’ll take care of things here. Go ahead.”

She didn’t move. For a long moment she stood there. Then she came over and sat down across from him. “You know,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Whatever happened, Logan? Whatever’s going on? It can’t be that bad.”

Couldn’t be that bad, right. Not as bad as being forced to kill the woman you love. He almost laughed. She had a point.

Instead, he looked up at her. Felt exposed by the softness of her gaze. Got the sense that she knew everything—all about this Rogue shit. Nothing got past Storm. He’d put money on the fact that she knew he’d slept with a prostitute after first coming to the mansion. Storm was just _like that_. 

But she didn’t judge him, and that kind of pissed him off. He wanted to be exposed and then rejected. He wanted to be turned out. 

“I’ll watch over things,” he said.

“Okay,” she whispered, but she didn’t move. Then she tugged at her sleeve and coughed into her hand.

She was asking him to come with her.

He’d recently figured something out about Storm. She wasn’t just claustrophobic—she was also agoraphobic. She didn’t like to go anywhere by herself. Was fearful of outsiders. Didn’t like crowds. Didn’t trust ordinary people. Preferred to stay close to the mansion.

_Went to school and I was very nervous, no one knew me, no one knew me._

Not so tough, he thought.

Had he been a better person, a sturdier guy, a less selfish asshole, he would have volunteered to go to the store for her. Or he would have offered to go with her. But he wasn’t that nice, wasn’t that selfless, and didn’t feel like getting up. He felt like sitting there, stewing in his own misery, and prodding the hole that Rogue had left in his heart.

She rose to her feet.

Suddenly, the air between them seemed to pop. There was a loud slam and a rush of wind and a rattle. The furniture shook. Logan gripped the table and spun around. Sam stood in the doorway.

“Mr. Logan! Ms. Munroe! My horse!” Then, he threw up.

Logan and Storm were on their feet, reaching for Sam. Storm’s hands were on his shoulders.

The kid straightened and turned to look at them. “My horse! She’s having the foal.”

“Calm down, calm down,” Storm said, trying to soothe him. She patted his arm. “It’ll be okay. Don’t cry. Logan?” She turned around.

“I’m on it,” he said, already slipping into his jacket.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to her,” Sam said.

“I’ll call the vet,” Storm said. She turned back to Sam, who was crying, “Honey, it’ll be okay. Horses do this all the time. They know what to do.”

"Then why is Mr. Logan freaking out?" Sam said. 

Logan didn't wait to hear Storm's answer. He headed for the back door.

###

Except that the vet didn’t come. He was taking another call—emergency surgery—and he couldn’t make it in time. Outside it was snowing, the landscape filling up with white, the roads becoming treacherous.

But everything went okay. Storm and Logan were both there to watch. Sam was inside with Bobby and Kitty, being comforted, being held there until he was calm enough to avoid using his powers.

Storm and Logan hung back and watched the horse foal from a distance of several yards.

“Should we step in and help?” Storm said.

Logan looked. “I—I don’t know. What does the manual say?”

She paged through the book. “Only if the horse is in distress. But how do we know if she’s in distress?”

Logan crouched down to study the mare. She lay on her side. Her eyes were glassy and her breathing labored. The foal had started to emerge from her, legs first, which was apparently normal. “I think this is normal,” he said, turning to look at Storm. “I don’t know.”

She paused and then nodded. 

“I don’t think we should touch her unless this goes on for too long.”

She nodded again. Trusted what he was saying.

(And later, when the foal did come, Logan stepped in to cut the sack and to make sure that the foal was breathing. He pulled the sack away from the foal’s wet coat. It looked at Logan, wide-eyed, and then blinked and started to move. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay,” he said again, not sure if he was talking to Storm or to the foal or to everyone in Salem Center. He reached over to rub the foal down with a towel. It struggled to its feet. It wasn’t miraculous, not really. In the country, animals were always being born and passing away. There were the families of foxes who set up their dens on the edge of campus, where they were safe from the hunters, and then there were the deer who met violent deaths on the two-lane freeway. “It’s okay,” he said again. He didn’t know what else to do.)

###

Afterwards, he and Storm were too keyed up to sleep. They brought Sam out so that he could see the new foal but kept him calm so that he didn’t wreck anything. He just kept saying “Oh my God!” and grinning. Finally they sent him back inside and up to bed.

“What’s wrong with him?” Logan asked Storm as they were crunching through the snow, heading back to the mansion. Then he realized that the question was inappropriate. “I mean, why is he so high-strung? What’s with all the throwing up?”

“Oh, poor Sam,” she said. “I know. I think he just has motion sickness. Whenever we go on a road trip that’s longer than ten minutes he has to bring a bucket. You know . . .” She slowed down. “He reminds me of me at that age.”

He looked over at her. “Really?”

“From what I can remember, yeah. But Sam. You know, he once got trapped in a mine shaft. That’s what triggered his powers. And when your powers are triggered by such a traumatic event, sometimes it’s difficult to use them without dredging up all those old feelings.”

Logan remembered nothing from his childhood, and sometimes he mourned those missing memories—but lately he was grateful. His time at the mansion had made him aware of all the bad things that could happen to a kid.

“Is that what happened to you?” he said.

“Sort of,” she said. “You know, he also reminds me of Remy LeBeau.”

He was torn between two feelings: frustration because she’d deflected the conversation away from herself, and interest in what she had to say about Remy. “What about LeBeau?”

“Oh, Sam is just so well-meaning but scattered. Remy was the same way. I imagine that Remy must have been that way as a child. I could be completely wrong, though.” She pulled away from and headed up the steps and to the light of the back porch. Then she turned back. “I could use a drink.”

“I’ve got some beer in the car,” he said.

She paused. “I need something stronger than that.”

Fifteen minutes later found them in the professor’s old study. He brought with him the bourbon he’d once found in the bottom of Scott’s filing cabinet. They sat on the sofa together. He poured her a shot, and then poured himself one.

He had to ask; he just couldn’t help himself. “So what about Remy LeBeau? Why did he leave the team?”

Storm downed her shot. “It was years ago. He had a falling-out with Scott, and Scott never said much about it. At one time they’d been close friends. Then, overnight, there was all this tension. It was—” She glanced at him. “You know, you never really told me how you know him.”

“I’ve known him for as long as I can remember. Which is only a couple decades, give or take a few years.”

She reached for the bottle.

“He was in rehab,” Logan said. “Last time I talked to him.”

She set the bottle down with a thud. “When did you last talk to him?”

“Five or six months ago.”

Storm searched his face. Then she shook her head. “I just—can’t believe that we never heard from him after Alcatraz. Not a word. No condolences about the professor or Scott or Jean. I seriously—” She sat back. “I can’t talk about it.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.” (He remembered Remy’s instructions—that he wasn’t to speak of their conversations. Maybe this was why.)

She sat forward again. “He left us, like I told you, right before a big mission. Left us in a real lurch. Scott was furious. The professor was . . . you can imagine. But what no one knew was that he came back,” she said. “To me.”

Logan waited.

“He showed up five or six days after the mission was finished,” she said. “No one saw him. Slipped into the mansion like a goddamn ghost. Said he forgot something. But then he came to me and said he needed a ride.”

“A ride? Where?”

“To the bus station.”

Logan looked at her. “Why did he need a ride to the bus station?”

“He didn’t. He just wanted an excuse to be driven somewhere.” She sat back again and brought her eyes to meet Logan’s. “So I drove him. And on the way there, he said absolutely nothing. Then he got out of the car, grabbed his bag, and boarded a bus. Next time I saw him was years later. Jean’s funeral.”

Logan exhaled and turned back to the booze. Poured himself another shot.

“Who knows,” she said, barely audible. “I missed him. He was fun. I still miss him.”

Logan made up his mind: he would call the guy.

But at that moment he decided to just sit there with Storm. She seemed to unwind. Her shoulders relaxed. Her breathing evened. He wanted to tell her about Rogue, but the wound was just too fresh. He’d save it for another time.

She dozed off while still sitting upright. She gently moved her onto her side and reached for a blanket. She’d probably be pissed off and embarrassed when she awoke here, hours later. But he didn’t want to wake her. She needed to sleep.

He made his rounds. Listened to music. Traded the doleful “Save a Prayer” for the more upbeat “Dancing with Myself.” Thought about going to check on the horses but trusted that they could take care of themselves.

###

Rogue came back to him three days later. He was carrying a can of paint down the hallway and she was heading into her math class. She tucked her books under one arm and told Kitty to go on without her. Then she headed him off.

“Hey,” she said. “You busy?”

He looked down at the paint can. What a question. “No, not really.” He took a breath, inhaled the scent of her shampoo (_apples_) and her lotion (_citrus_).

“I heard you saved the day again,” she said.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“The foal,” she clarified. She smiled. “The way Sam’s talking, it’s like you delivered it bare-handed and brought it back from the brink of death.”

He laughed. “Sam wasn’t there.”

She stopped laughing and peered at him. “Logan—”

He set the paint can down next to the floorboard. They both turned together and headed to a semi-private alcove near the end of the hallway. The place was quieting down, passing into busy silence. Everyone was in class.

She turned and looked up at him. Her eyes were wide. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “About what happened—about what I did—”

“Rogue,” he said, and took her in his arms. He didn’t hesitate.

She was quiet for a moment. He was too. He felt his chest tighten.

She gave a shuddering gasp. “It wasn’t right,” she said, crying. “I’m not right.”

He gently nudged her back so that he could look at her. “Don’t say that.”

She locked onto him. Clutched his arm. “Logan—I’m scared all the time—of the future—of what might happen—I don’t want to lose you—”

He squeezed her shoulder. “You won’t.” He felt something inside of him open. “I promise.”

“I didn’t mean what I said.”

He hugged her again. Close.

He knew he should tell her to get to class, but the moment was too fraught, and he needed her. He touched her hair. Cupped her head. Tried to ignore his own tears until he just couldn’t anymore. He wanted to tell her that the days without her had been the most painful he could remember, but he held back.

After this, after the incident, he always held back a little. They were still friends, and they still laughed together, but they didn’t talk as they used to. They didn’t continue from this unchanged and unmarked—they couldn’t. Afterwards, there was always a distance, an undoing, a self-consciousness that they hadn’t had before. They trusted each other, but they didn’t quite trust themselves. Between them, there’d always be a moment of perceived second-guessing, of slight delay.

###

He found his cell phone charger when he was doing his laundry. It had been sandwiched between his snow boots. He plugged in his phone and waited for it to charge. The next day, he called Remy LeBeau.

“What the fuck, Logan,” Remy said. “I thought you died.”

“Really.”

“I tried calling you.”

“When?”

“All the time!”

“So how are you?” Logan asked while he stood in the middle of the laundry room, folding a shirt.

“Clean and sober.” He chuckled. “Seventy-four days.”

Logan stopped folding. Did the math. “By my count, you should have a shit ton more days than that.”

“Yeah. Well. What can I say, _ami_. Relapsed.”

Logan stepped back from his pile of clothes. Fumed. “What the hell happened to setting course for clean permanently?”

Silence. Then: “Woulda been nice.”

Logan gripped the phone and tried to quell the heatedness of his anger. He knew that it was a disease, an addiction, the drugs talking, not the person, etc., etc., but he couldn’t help but feel offended, used, lied to. He couldn’t reconcile his belief in personal agency with Remy’s continual surrender to the shit-slog of life. He just wanted to go down to Louisiana and beat Remy senseless.

“Why?” he said.

Another silence, this one long. Logan ran his fingers along his brow.

Then Remy finally spoke. “You can’t take Jesus out.”

Then: “Turns out, even a man like me got to have somethin’ to believe in.”

And they lapsed into silence again.

Logan paced to the window. Looked out into the snowy courtyard, the stark brown trees at the edge of campus. “So that’s it? That’s your answer? That’s the reason you can’t stay clean? You just needed to believe in God?”

“Oh no,” Remy said. “I don’t believe in God. Don’t advocate it, either. But you got to have somethin’. Somethin’ other than books, it turns out. Just somethin’.”

Logan felt the air leave his body. His eyes welled with tears. “What?” he whispered. 

“What? What do I believe in? _Non_, you don’t want to know. It’s for me to know. Private.”

“Tell me.” Logan looked straight into the gray sky.

Remy was quiet for several moments. Then he started to talk.

“Remember that time I saw you in Arizona? We just met up, and it was this weird, kooky thing? Like it was fuckin’ meant to be?”

Logan touched the windowpane with one finger. He remembered the time. They’d both been alone. That wasn’t unusual for Logan—he was always alone—but whenever Logan came across Remy in New Orleans, the guy had a fuckin’ entourage. But during that weekend in Phoenix, Remy was by himself. And by himself he looked skinny and older. A little wizened. Not so new and brilliant. He looked like someone just trying to extract himself from the world for a moment, trying to get a good look at things.

“And remember when we went to breakfast?” he continued. “We sat across the booth from each other. I kept trying to put my feet in your lap, and you didn’t like that. It pissed you off.”

“I was trying to eat.”

“It made you feel gay.”

“It didn’t make me feel anything, fucko. _Nothing_ about you makes me feel anything.”

Remy just started to laugh. “It clearly made you uncomfortable. Anyway.” He fell silent.

“And?”

On the other end of the phone: Silence. Then: “That’s all.”

“_The fuck_.”

“I told you. It’s nothing you want to know.”

Logan closed his eyes. “Christ.”

“Oh Logan, Logan. God, you’re so . . . fragile. I’m so sorry. I can’t take that away. No, listen, _cher_.” He sighed. “I’ll tell you what gets me through the day. You do. You have a lot of people now. I used to have people. In fact, I used to have the same people. Years ago I walked away. You asked me why. I don’t know if I can tell you right here and now—but they wanted more than I could give. The life of an X-Man just wasn’t for me. I wanted to come and go as I pleased.” He paused. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For looking out for my people, that’s what. Yeah, all that shit last spring. Summers and the professor. Jean. Alcatraz. You took care of my people. Once they were mine. Now they yours.”

“They’re dead,” Logan said quietly.

“And that’s just the way it shook down. But you were there, Logan. You looked out. You did me a solid. _Merci_. I owe you one, brother.”

Logan continued to stare at the landscape, at its fixedness. He watched the stillness pass by.

“I want to change the subject now,” Remy said.

Logan didn’t ever remember Remy being so direct, so unequivocal about anything. “Okay,” he said. He cleared his throat and waited for the new conversation to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sequel to this story was posted and then orphaned a while back. It's called "One More Try" and you can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405088


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